Character etymology for 买 (mǎi, to buy) and 卖 (mài, to sell)

Today we will look at two characters as a change. 买 (mǎi, to buy) and 卖 (mài, to sell)

Character:买

Traditional form:買Pinyin:mǎi

Meaning: to buy, purchase; bribe, persuade

Frequency: 840

Strokes: 6

Decomposition: 乛 wān (yǐ second) + 头 tóu head

Radical part:乛 wān

Alternative forms of radical: 乙(yǐ ), 乚(yǐ ),乛

Radical meaning: second

Stroke animation: (the strokes are drawn the direction the picture is tipping)

Etymology: To understand this character we first need to look at the traditional form of the character:

買

By looking at early bronze version of the character we can see that it have changed very little before the latest simplification. The picture is a net over a cowry shell. In early days cowry shells where used as a sort of money.

Picture of a cowry shell

A net with goods e.g. fish is bought by giving your cowry shells as payment. There are many other suggested meanings to this. E.g with a net you can catch the cowry shells that can be used to buy things with.To get the antonym to sell 卖, mài, we just add 十 ,shí ,ten to the top.

One easy way to remember them my teacher at the university in Beijing learned me. The character who wants to buy is having an empty roof = need to buy goods. The one who is selling is having ten items on the roof that he likes to sell.

The character have been simplified and today we are using 头 tóu meaning body and 乛 yǐ meaning second. I remember this by thinking like this: You need a second person, the seller, to be able to buy.